They were being advertised as baseball’s hottest rock band. A super rotation that had been made whole with the signing of Cliff Lee during the previous winter arrived in Clearwater, Fla., in 2011 with more hype than any unit in Phillies history.

But Roy Halladay — the quiet workaholic whose personality didn’t exactly mesh with that traveling circus' demands — was bound and determined to prove a point. And so, when the request came on the first day of spring training for a Sports Illustrated cover shot of himself, Lee, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt, Halladay was going to hold out until the fifth rotation member — Joe Blanton — was included with everyone else.

“Everybody labeled us as 'The Four Aces,'” Cole Hamels said on Tuesday in Philadelphia. “Roy came in and said, 'No, it’s Five Aces. We have five guys in this rotation and they’re all aces.' We believed it. We saw that from Roy and we believed it.”

From that moment on, Blanton was included in everything that took place with that staff. But perhaps more importantly, on a personal level, a bond through the ages was formed. Three years ago, four of the five members of that rotation traveled together on a vacation with their families to Australia. Oswalt missed the trip, but he was replaced by Kyle Kendrick, who often floated in and out of the rotation during the summer of 2011.

“We spent about 16 to 20 days together,” Hamels said. “It was the best time ever. You see us on the field and we're having a great time. We had a great time off the field too.”

For a second, Hamels stopped and gathered himself. Because “The Five Aces” lost their leader on Tuesday when Halladay — a two-time Cy Young Award winner — died in a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico near his home in Florida.

Halladay was 40 years old and leaves behind his wife, Brandy, and two sons – Braden and Ryan.

“Roy and Brandy and his two boys, Ryan and Braden, they are a part of our lives and the moments that we’ve lived so far in this great game,” Hamels said. “This isn’t really about me being up here. It’s about who Roy was, what he represented to the game of baseball, what he represented to the Toronto Blue Jays, to the Philadelphia Phillies.”

Halladay pitched for four years in Philadelphia. In the grand scheme of a baseball career, that’s not a lot of time. It is only a third of the time that Halladay spent in Toronto during his career.

And yet, he is still viewed as a legendary figure within the franchise’s history. The two years that Halladay put together in 2010 and 2011 — a combined 40-16 record with a 2.40 ERA, a 1.041 WHIP, 439 strikeouts/65 walks, a Cy Young award in ’10, a 17.2 WAR, a perfect game and only one of two postseason no-hitters in major league history — are arguably the best back-to-back seasons for a starting pitcher in Phillies history.

Roy Halladay delivers during his no-hitter in Game 1 of the 2010 NLDS against the Reds at Citizens Bank Park. (Photo by Chris Trotman/Getty Images)

The injury bug would end his career prematurely in 2013 after two sub-par seasons at the end of his Philadelphia tenure. In the end, that really didn’t matter for Halladay’s legacy.

“Roy was the best competitor I’d ever seen,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said in a statement released by the organization. “It was an honor to have managed him. He was not only a great pitcher, but a great person and a tremendous father. His contributions to the Phillies can’t be measured.”

After the pre-Christmas trade with the Blue Jays in 2009, Halladay joined a Phillies team that had won a World Series, two NL pennants and three straight NL East titles, and instantly became the brightest star in the clubhouse. His work ethic and legendary workouts dropped jaws among seasoned vets who were not easy to impress. And in a clubhouse that had its share of egos, Halladay somehow managed to do it without putting his own desires ahead of the team's goals.

“I think you come to realize that you have very small, short moments in life to do something great so you have to maximize it,” Hamels said. “You have to make the best of it. And he did. He made us push to a level that sometimes you didn’t think you could actually reach. He made everybody better.”

He also changed the team's identity of that era. When the Phillies won the World Series in 2008 and went back in 2009, they were known as offensive club that had decent but unspectacular starting pitching. Hamels was terrific in 2008 while Lee picked up the pace in 2009, but the rest of the staff was somewhat lackluster. Halladay’s arrival ensured it would never be viewed that way again.

“Everybody always doubted that Philadelphia would ever have a good pitching staff,” Hamels said. “But we never thought that. We always believed we could. And we did. When he came into that clubhouse, he really assured us that we could be a dominant pitching staff. We did. For me, that's what taught me how to bring my game up to the next level.”

Those were the things on the surface that everyone could see. It was the behind-the-scenes stuff that most didn’t get a good look at which flew under the radar.

When Halladay threw his perfect game against the Marlins in May 2010, he bought 60 engraved watches for everyone in the clubhouse as a thank-you gift.

“I even got a watch,” Phillies chairman David Montgomery said. “The reality is that it was just Roy’s statement that it wasn’t about me, it was about us and what we accomplished.”

That Phillies family was in mourning on Tuesday night for its quiet leader, who left a huge mark in a short time before leaving way too soon.

Kevin Cooney has covered sports in his home town of Philadelphia for the past 25 years. For the past 15 seasons, he served as baseball writer/columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times. You can follow Kevin on Twitter at @KevinCooney.